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Thursday, July 31, 2003

Yesterday I read a review in the D of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and I was dumbfounded by it, until I realized it was by Joe Rago. Today I read Ms. Keshava's piece, and I was dumbfounded to find that it was not another of Joe's scalding spoofs.

Who admits these kids? My favorite line was "the image that my mind instantly conjures up is that of a young corporate recruit rapidly making his or her way towards Wall Street"--but I invite my fellow Dartloggers to submit their own selections.

Wednesday, July 30, 2003

The latest issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education features an article about Dartmouth's Jewish Sound Archive, "an encyclopedia of all Jewish sound." The archive includes Jewish speeches, songs, sayings, expressions, dialects, jokes, etc.

The archive is accessible online for Dartmouth students and faculty, and those who request permission (copyright, you know). However, since we alums have access to the Dartmouth library network, we should be able to access this too. Right? I tried logging in with my Blitz info, but that doesn't do the trick.

Tuesday, July 29, 2003

You may remember this guy talking about building the Dartmouth "brand."

Seems he still is suffering from low self-esteem about his college choice. He has started a blitz group devoted to spreading news about Dartmouth and its alums - he uses the Kobe Bryant prosecutor as a chief example.

Sunday, July 27, 2003

I have a question. What the HELL is "South S.C."? Do we now have 3 Carolinas? A North Carolina, a North South Carolina, and a South South Carolina (South S.C.)? Scholer, what's going on down there?

Or was my original theory correct and liberals are a bunch of morons who can neither ascertain nor verify any factitudinal information?

Q: What rhymes with element number 5?

My being obnoxious aside, what is going on here? How is it remotely *possible* for an organization such as UC Berkeley, which is sanctioned by the State of California, which in turn is sanctioned by the federal government, to allow such a thing to be published?

Have we abandoned all pretenses of professionalism? I mean, maybe we should all just give up.

Concerns with fear and threat, likewise, can be linked to a second key dimension of conservatism - an endorsement of inequality, a view reflected in the Indian caste system, South African apartheid and the conservative, segregationist politics of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-South S.C.).

And try this one on for size:

The researchers conceded cases of left-wing ideologues, such as Stalin, Khrushchev or Castro, who, once in power, steadfastly resisted change, allegedly in the name of egalitarianism.

Yet, they noted that some of these figures might be considered politically conservative in the context of the systems that they defended. The researchers noted that Stalin, for example, was concerned about defending and preserving the existing Soviet system.

See, as soon as Lefties start doing bad things, they become -- conservatives. How convenient.

But the coup de grace:

Disparate conservatives share a resistance to change and acceptance of inequality, the authors said. Hitler, Mussolini, and former President Ronald Reagan were individuals, but all were right-wing conservatives because they preached a return to an idealized past and condoned inequality in some form. Talk host Rush Limbaugh can be described the same way. [Emphasis mine.]

Hitler, Mussolini, Reagan -- all cut from the same cloth.

Words truly fail.

UPDATE It should be said that Russell Kirk, a fine conservative mind, established as one of the hallmarks of conservatism a belief in "the principle of variety." This is not the same thing as "an endorsement of inequality," as these "researchers" have defined it. Rather, it's a philosophical acknowledgement of the differences between men, in terms of ability, character, and so on. This diversity is good and healthy to a free society -- but it does not involve "second-class citizenship" as embodied in the caste system, Apartheid, or Jim Crow. As Kirk says, man should be equal before the judge and God alone. The caste system -- that exemplar of conservatism, ahem -- violates this principle and is decidedly not conservative.

UPDATE Here's some considered criticism. The author also brings up Adorno's hogwash about the "authoritarian personality" -- I had forgotten all about that!

"according to some students and professors, the program's location [Edinburgh's New College Divinity School] is antithetical to the Dartmouth religion department's commitment to a secular study of faith.

"'We are a religion department -- not a theological department," religion professor Susannah Heschel said. "Why we would send students to a Christian denominational institution, I don't know.'

"...New College offers mostly courses in Christian theology, including some that students said were more conducive to personal testimonials of faith than the kind of intellectual analysis they are used to at Dartmouth."

"...Heschel, who is also the chair of the Jewish Studies program, said that...the very act of holding the program within a divinity school has the potential to put some students ill at ease.

"'When I was a student I would have been deeply offended," she said. "Every FSP should be comfortable for every student.'"

The article largely speaks for itself, but "secular religious studies" is a glaring contradiction. The distinction between "religion" and "theology" is visible in the mind of only a few professors, and I'm sure disappears all together in, say, the Jewish Studies program The article goes on to quote a number of students who, while admitting the FSP's shocking focus on Christianity, said they had no problem with the program.

Any thoughts from those with more experience in the religion dept. than I?

Friday, July 18, 2003

Hello everyone. I just wanted to take this brief opportunity to let everyone know that, come August 1, I will no longer be an employee at FIRE. I've accepted a job at Kirkland & Ellis, a very prestigious law firm, with headquarters in Chicago. If anyone wants to email me between now and when I get my Kirkland accoutn, my alum account is the best way to go --- emd *at* alum.dartmouth.org.

The Free Press did a piece on divestment during the 80s in their latest issue, and this is what they say about those Reviewers who tore down the shanties:

For four months, the shanties remained on the green as a symbol to some, an eyesore to others. One night in February of �86 the shanties were attacked. A group of ten to twelve students, wielding sledge hammers, destroyed three of the shanties before the police arrived to stop the violence. Most of the students involved in the attack were members of The Dartmouth Review, a conservative paper critical of the shanties and the actions of the DCD. Despite the overlap in membership, the group of students did not officially act in affiliation with the paper, instead referring to themselves as the Committee to Beautify the Green for Winter Carnival. They saw themselves as taking action in an arena that the administration was unwilling to become involved in.

In response to the attack, 175 students occupied Parkhurst Hall, invading the hallways, stairwell, administrative offices and even the office of the President. Over one hundred students spent the night to show their anger at the destruction of the shanties. The administration, calling for a moratorium, cancelled classes for a day to allow for a discussion series on intolerance.
A feature in Rolling Stone in March of 1986 included two opinion pieces on the controversy, one from the DCD and one from the attackers. Divestment movements on other campuses looked to what was happening at Dartmouth for direction. Leaflets were circulated that encouraged traditionally liberal Berkeley students to persevere in their divestment struggle, as Dartmouth�s traditionally conservative students had despite the attack. In April of �85 the college started to sell its investments in South Africa, but by no means did it appear to be interested in full divestment.

A debate erupted on campus during this time concerning the legitimacy of the shanties, the attack on them, and what punishment each side deserved. The Committee On Standards (COS) opted not to punish those who initially built the shanties, ignoring cries of trespassing violations by other students. The COS did, however, choose to punish those students who attacked the shanties. With initial suspensions ranging from 1-3 terms, the punishments for those students were later reduced to probations. Some of the students directly involved in the DCD and construction of the shanties were outraged by the reduction in punishment and in response took over the Baker Library bell tower for an afternoon. Many, from both sides of the debate, viewed their actions as immature. Those who had occupied the tower said that their action was not intended to inspire support of their cause; it was a reaction that expressed their anger at the reductions.... sort of

Richard Akerboom '80, Thayer '82, sponsored the first Tubestock weekend in 1986. Two years ago, however, he withdrew his sponsorship without publicly explaining his reasons for doing so.

Has anybody figured this out? He was a Heorot--Marucheck? Tokson?

Each Greek house will appoint two sober monitors, who will wear red visors to make them readily visible. The police have agreed to approach the monitors first about signs of trouble, according to William Fang '05, moderator of the GLC.

Is this really happening? My fraternity is a small house; this could be devastating...though I tend to think the 5-0 will be cool as in past years.

Wednesday, July 16, 2003

We've got our new server. When the domain-name transfer actually takes place, there will be an outage of up to one day. Most likely, this will happen separately for dartreview.com, dartlog.net, and dartblogs.com (if it happens all at once...let's not think about that).

Anyway, the upside is that things will be much faster on all TDR site and that it will be easier for us to add all sorts of neat stuff.

So, for anyone who cares, here is a page being served off of the new server...

Update: Dartlog is migrated (even if the name server hasn't caught up with us yet). Dartreview will go over tomorrow or tonight (I want to make some technical changes before throwing the switch) and Dartblogs will go, um, eventually. Let me know if you see any problems. Yes, I know that Blitzlite is broken; it will be replaced with a faster version tonight, after Anna and I go out and get drunk.

So I was looking up Inga Muscio's page-turner, Cunt on Amazon (trust me, it's work-related). Apparently, there's another book with the same delicate title, by a feller named Stewart Home. The only review -- a one-star review -- had this to say:

It was wacky and out of step with Bolachian principles. You could even say it had a Vludicrian influence but only slight hints and purposely concealed. I didn't like the book at all as it was perfect up until the end and then fell flat with Jerrialimian contrived symbolism thrown in seemingly randomly to tie-up the story.

But the same could be said of so many books these days.

I'd link to Andrew Grossman's review of Miss Muscio's book, but I can't seem to find it online...

As evidence of CR's activity, James cites two speakers who came to town on CR's dime -- Christina Hoff Sommers and yours truly. Incidentally, both speakers are affiliated with FIRE: I, of course, work for FIRE, and Christina Hoff Sommers is on our Board of Advisors. Clutch!

Sunday, July 13, 2003

I'm so irritated at the College and its policies that I long ago decided to not give them a dime. This has led to my practice of giving the wrong address. Over the last year, mail from Dartmouth has been sent to the Florida State Prison in Raiford, FL, and the Federal Supermax in Florence, CO. After about 8 weeks, I get an email saying that the address didn't work and if I could please update my coordinates. I can't think of anything I would want to receive from the College, even the Alumni Magazine. The D.A.M. not really worth reading and in any case my alumni friends do receive it so I can occassionally glimpse at the (almost always lame) class notes.

But, this Harvard man's antics gives me new inspiration on how to avoid the shakedown (er, fundraising) artists employed in Blunt.

Friday, July 11, 2003

These appear to be fightin' words, at least coming from the previously tight-lipped Clark. The General appears to be at least contemplating the 2004 race after a vigorous draft attempt. He has even launched his own website to "foster the national debate."

Well I'm glad they printed it, but the Daily D did defang it quite a bit. So I thought I'd post the sentences that they must have felt were too edgy.

Last sentence of first paragraph:
"Of course, maybe Brent C. Reidy and Kabir Sehgal would have realized this had they actually considered the merits of their own claims."

Middle of second paragraph:
"Further, he thinks that 'The name Dartmouth ought to shake the walls of a room when it is slipped into a conversation.'" (The point of this one was to show how immature this kid is.)

End of third paragraph:
"To require an ego boost from this type of verbal massage is, quite frankly, something I�d expect from kids in elementary school."

End of fifth:
"No, these students, like Mr. Reidy and Mr. Sehgal, apply because they want jaws to drop when they mention they attend Dartmouth. "

Beginning of seventh:
I called Mr. Reidy's editorial a "childish rant," but that didn't make it.

End of seventh:
"At the end of his editorial, Mr. Reidy asks, 'Where do we draw the line between being low key and being last?' We�re neither, and if Mr. Reidy truly thinks this, maybe he should reapply to Harvard; it might be a better fit."

Correct me if I'm wrong, Nilly, but carrying around a stack of papers and claiming that you'd just been to Kiewit to retrieve a printout saved your own self from campus drunkeness charges at least once, no?

I never really understood what the big deal was. How much will they charge per sheet now? $0.05? $0.10? Those printers do cost money, as does the paper, and the amount of wasted paper that I've seen is unconscionable.

Thursday, July 10, 2003

I should add that end this was pretty obvious since the system was announced, even though the College denied it loudly and repeatedly. Of course, this is hardly the only time that the College has lied to students about its future plans. Should everyone - students, alumni, and faculty - just give up on the idea of straight talk from the administration altogether?

In one scene, Belushi smashes a guitar. But it didn't break on the first take.
"He went ballistic," said McGill, who played D-Day. "He was furious because he hated to look inept physically. He thought of himself as a physical guy."

Hidden at the end of the article is that "the early part of the Assembly meeting was held outside on the Senior Fence on the Green, which the College will soon relocate to the corner of Main Street and Wheelock Street. Assembly members speculated that the move was to prevent foot traffic from cutting across that corner of the Green and killing the grass there."

Does this strike anyone else as odd? I always thought that the Senior Fence is in its present location based on where the Senior Fence was historically. Could this be another example of the Administration destroying institutional memory via diktat to suit its whims and fancies? Or is the location of the fence of no historical import?

UPDATE: I have since been informed that the location of the fence is not historical-- it in fact used to encircle the entire Green, so moving the current sections down to the corner of Wheelock and Main would not be anachronistic. Thanks are due to Nathaniel Ward from the D for sending me the information that was left out of his original article.

It looks like the College will start charging students for printing, because, not surprisingly, Greenprint has led to much more printing, and much more waste (20% increase, says the Daily D). Related, the College is now giving all students free nationwide long distance, although students who abuse the system may be limited.

...and it's not the fault of all the Europeans. The Brits and others were keen in recent subsidy talks to scrap much of the program (even the Economist deemed their multilaterally negotiated proposals to be "substantial reform"). And who kept the subsidy regime in place?

One guess...

Yep...

France.

And who gets screwed? Besides the grocery-buying and tax-paying public (actually, to be fair, poor urban mobs eating state subsidized food do a bit better with ag supports in place; like in a Third World country, this is probably a concern in France), it's non-EU producers, of course, mostly situated in developing or former communist countries.

But American consumers also took a knock when Chirac drove the negotiations off track (remember that Chirac is a former ag minister; by all accounts, what happened falls squarely on his shoulders). How's that? Since he got into office, GWB has been looking to negotiate a bilateral deal with Europe to phase out subsidies. The looming EU expansion set the stage for this in Europe, and a preliminary move by the EU (even something more symbolic than significant) could have been just the thing to spark some action over here as it would have disarmed much of the farm lobby's resistance. Well, maybe next year (fat chance: cut farm subsidies in an election year?!).

Not only is bad local government a major obstacle, but Gore failed to note that in the BBC article, it's the European Union who is the subsidy culprit responsible for the $913/cow/year figure. US farm subsidies, while high, are nowhere near as bloated as those in Europe.

Kudos to the Bush administration for arguing against Europe's high agricultural subsidies and block-headed rules against genetically-modified foods at the Doha trade talks. Both will help American farmers (enabling the US government to trim its own subsidies) and help poor nations feed themselves.

From the department of "If I throw these stats together maybe someone will think I actually made a point:"

Over at freedartmouth, Nikhil Gore writes:

"The BBC reports on the UNDPs logical conclusions to countries' policies that subsidize cows at $913/year/cow while giving Africa aid at $8/year/person."

I'm no fan of farm subsidies, but it's just a tad dubious to draw a connection between cow subsidies here and aid to Africa. We could give $10K per person in aid to Africa, and I'm willing to bet (through a Caymans account of course) that Africa would still be screwed up. Until its problems of corruption, ethnic fighting, and backwards health education are dealt with, any money we give them will be essentially pissed away.

I tried to post this in the Inner Office, but Blogger apparently doesn't like me...

A couple days old...

"It's easier for most Latin guys and it's easier for most minority people because most of us come from heat. You don't find too many brothers in New Hampshire and Maine and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. ... We were brought over here for the heat, right? Isn't that history? Weren't we brought over because we could take the heat?"

The words of Al Campanis? Jimmy the Greek? No, Cubs manager Dusty Baker. I know pointing out double standards like this is pretty much a worthless exercise, but how fast would a white manager have had to clean out his office after saying this? Remember after all that Campanis was a highly respected Dodger executive who, as a player, had been one of the most accepting and helpful teammates of Jackie Robinson. After some racially "insenstive" comments on Nightline (comments that were on par with Baker's), his career and rep were destroyed.

(As context, Baker I'm sure was responding to a question about day games affecting his team's performance as the season wears on. As a lifelong Cubs fan, this is an annual event; as the Cubs go into a June swoon, the reporters begin to wonder whether the amount of day games affects their play.)

Tuesday, July 08, 2003

The CR website is up and running, kicking off a year of crucial campaigning for the party. While the Democrats parade a seemingly endless troupe of wannabes, we will be focusing on qualified incumbents, on a national as well as state level. Those on campus this term should be sure to check out the events page, as we have a great BBQ coming up this Thursday.

Thursday, July 03, 2003

This Boston Globe Magazine article is about competition for star professors. Two Dartmouth-related quotes -- of former President James O. Freedman and of the twice recruited Dean of Faculty, Michael S. Gazzaniga.

Dinesh D'Souza has a long piece at NRO today. It's classic Dinesh -- adapted from his latest book and chock-full of the examples he's been offering in speaking engagements for years. But it's still a fun read and a great refresher. I love America, and Dinesh is the one person who has helped me verbalize exactly why I do.

The Daily Dartmouth is reporting today on the quick demise of Mojo's Bistro, a flashy little Mexican joint on South Main Street, in part of what was the Dartmouth Co-op. Apparently, there's some disagreement over why it failed to take to the Hanover scene. Owner Nigel Leeming attributes it in part to the sluggish economy. However, he also offers this reason:

"The public has to like what they see. We were progressive in terms of Mexican and it probably scared some people off," Leeming said. "We weren't your traditional Tex-Mex place."

[...]

Leeming said that the Upper Valley has long preferred a traditional, New England menu at its restaurants. Though Asian cuisine may be the exception to the rule, many other eating establishments that carry exotic fare have foundered, as did Mojo's.

"The Upper Valley is a very meat-and-potatoes place," he said. "There are twists to it, but it's a very conservative eating area."

So the burritos were too "progressive" and Hanover couldn't handle it. Hmmm... Well, some students offer other opinions on the matter:

Many students, though, said that they steered clear from dining at Mojo's because of what they saw as exorbitant prices and mediocre fare.

Petra Halsema '03 said she wasn't surprised that Mojo's had lost its, well, mojo.

"I thought the food was too pricey. If they spent less money on the decorations and more on the food, they might have succeeded better," she said.

Others were eager to see what will replace Mojo's.

"I heard that the food was overrated and expensive, and I'd love to have a restaurant I'd like to go to in its place," Zena Bugaighis '05 said.

Wednesday, July 02, 2003

Not so much Dartmouth news, but it will have an impact on the upcoming season.

Chris Higgins, who would have been a junior forward at Yale this coming year, has signed with Montreal and will be leaving college. As well, David LeNeveu, a goaltender from Cornell, has signed a contract with the Pheonix Coyotes. These signings are significant for several reasons. They were the co-players of the year in the ECAC last year. Their losses leave a huge hole for each school to fill. Consequently, it opens the door for Dartmouth to continue their upswing and grab second this coming year. With LeNeveu, Cornell likely would've been picked to finish 2nd in the conference. Without him, they likely fall to 4th or 5th in the preseason polls. Likewise Yale probably falls from a likely 3-5 pick to more of a 5-7 pick in the preseason polls.

Harvard will now be the prohibitive favorite to win the conference. But if Dartmouth can get any sort of consistent goaltending and this year's freshmen can contribute even a fraction of what last year's freshmen did, they could contend a year earlier than I was currently predicting.